By Hook, By Hand

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Dollmaking is one of life's innocent joys. As the doll takes shape within your hands, there is no room in your mind for negative thoughts. Time slows down; the focus is on the creative magic taking place before you. Whether you are crocheting, sewing, knitting, sculpting, or simply wrapping wire with floss, the doll is taking shape before your eyes, with a piece of your soul wound around it.

These dolls are derived and inspired by a series of YouTube tutorials by Emilie Lefler. She has 60 tutorials, from 9 to 19 minutes in length, where she shows you how to create some truly beautiful dolls from bead, floral wire, floss, and flower petals.

The first tutorial shows you how to make the basic doll. The only thing I do differently from Emilie when making the dolls is to wrap the end of the wire at the hands and feet, instead of securing with hot glue. In fact, I don't use any hot glue in the making of the doll body (a bit when doing the hair, though). Instead, I bury the beginning of the floss when wrapping the doll, then at the end insert the floss tail into a tapestry needle and run it into the dolls body for an inch or sew and cut off, as in the image below.

Also, my dolls are shorter, since I bend up the bottom of the leg about and inch or so to wrap all around the foot and then up the leg.

These lovely dolls are easy to make; I've used flower petals, fabric circles, and crochet to make their outfits. Some of them are remove-able (the crochet one's) others are not. After each doll is complete there is such a feeling of sweet accomplishment and joy. Giving the dolls away shares this joy with others.

Here is a fun way to create a stand for your doll, which can be embellished or not to your heart's content. Using wood plaques or wooden disks or coasters, glue a small wooden spool to the disk. Make sure the hole in the spool is large enough to accommodate one foot of your doll. After the glue dries, decorate your stand as you like. The top one I just added buttons and ribbon roses randomly, the one on the left is a birch disk (from Michaels) with a wooden drawer knob masquerading as a mushroom, and the one on the right rather more elaborate with a crocheted doily and flowers glued down.

Friday, April 27, 2018

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

If you have a family of tiny dolls, they must be in need of a home! What I wanted to do was purchase one of those cute CD storage containers that look like a house...I made a dollhouse out of one of these several years ago (See this post). Sadly, they don't seem to be made anymore...what to do?

Well, since I hoard boxes (to my husbands dismay), I decided to see what could be done with a single box and some craft sticks collecting dust in my stash of craft goodies.

Here is a photo tutorial on Flickr on making this dollhouse, for the 2 1/2 inch Bendy dolls I've been making:

Monday, April 16, 2018

We snuck in an overnight camping trip to Brown County state park this last week. The weather was dry and in the 70's (as I write this Monday afternoon it is snowing!). We had a wonderful time, in the most beautiful of our state parks.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

This afternoon I just had to make a couple of bendy dolls. Several years ago I made dozens of these little dolls from Salley Mavor's Felt Wee Folk book. Instead of using embroidery floss, I remembered I had a stash of Persian style crewel yarn in a gazillion different colors. This almost got tossed when cleaning up my workroom a few weeks ago, but I just couldn't trash all those beautiful skeins, even though I had no idea what I might use them for.

Well, they work GREAT for wrapping the pipecleaners, and making the hair :-)

These little dolls are 2 1/2 inches tall, and require just one 12 inch pipecleaner to make them. The doll on the left has a 20mm diameter head, and the one on the right a 16mm diameter head. They have acorn caps that I've had for over 10 years, just waiting to be used again :-)

Rose among the Hellebores

Daffodil

Instead of dressing them in felt, I want to crochet some remove-able outfits for them, which is a departure from the book. And I think they look sweet faceless; what do you think?

Sunday, April 8, 2018

March has come and gone...it brought the most snow we've had all winter, but the flowers continue to bloom.

I fell in love with Dala horses this month! A Dala horse is an artifact of Swedish culture: a carved stylized horse with lovely painted details.

These three are from Etsy. The largest is 6.5 inches from toe to ear, the smallest is 5.0 inches. Since carving and painting are not my strong suits, I looked around for a crochet pattern for this style of horse. This is what I found:

The basic horse pattern is for an Icelandic Horse, freely available on Ravelry by K. Godinez. Here is a direct link to her pattern page:

I tweaked the pattern slightly by adding a stitch to both legs (making them slightly wider) and inserting a thin wooden spool in the bottom of the leg to make them stand a bit better (a piece of dowel rod the appropriate diameter would also work).

I then decorated my horses with crochet flowers, lace, and doilies.

My bead and dowel doll Diane was very happy with the result, so I made her a Swedish inspired outfit to go with her horses :-)

The pinafore is from a pattern for crochet Hitty that you can find on this blog on the left sidebar. The bonnet is from a pattern designed by Joyce and is available on her Flickr site. The dress is a fitted waist crochet Hitty dress that you can also find on this blog. Look for Crochet Hitty on the left sidebar and you should find several outfits to make for this doll.

Friday, March 9, 2018

We love cats! And so does Hitty Twig. If you knit, Rabbit Hole Knits on Ravelry has two freely available and delightful knit kitties; one of which you see here in grey on the right. This is the Tiny Window Cat. There is also a Tiny Parlor Cat.

I do knit, but it is not my strong suit, so I used the inspiration of the Rabbit Hole Knit kitties and created two crochet kitties. The ones you see in Twig's lap, and the one of the left.

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

When it looks like a craft store has exploded in your work room, its time to bring some Order out of Chaos! I still need to get Aragorn hung on the wall, instead of leaning on it, and the pile of boxes in the lower left are my next project. Stay tuned.

About Me

Welcome! My name is Beth and I live in the Midwest of the United States. I was 12 years old when Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon. I would have been an astronaut, but my fear of heights has kept me grounded :-) Instead, I became a Mechanical Engineer and worked in industry for many years. Now I design and make soft dolls; a passion I've enjoyed since my Grandmother first taught me to crochet.